Stroke support stories - MacDonald Oguike, Nigeria

The World Stroke Organisation is committed to develop more Stroke Support Organizations (SSOs) and stroke support activities around the world. Supportive activity can include information and advice, peer support, family counselling, rehabilitation therapy and welfare services. We want to promote this invaluable activity as much as we can. If you would like to share your stories of stroke support please contact Sarah.Belson@stroke.org.uk

Winner of the
2016 World Stroke Campaign Award for outstanding individual achievement,
MacDonald Oguike of Acha Memorial Foundation in Nigeria, shares his story of
becoming involved in stroke support.

What has inspired you to be involved
in stroke support?

My brother
and I lost my dad to stroke in 2015. After his death, we were inspired to
educate other people about stroke because we felt this was the best way to keep
his memory alive.

How did the project come about?

Before he
passed away, my dad’s stroke left him with a movement disability for seven
years. This could have been prevented during the early stages if we had more
education and awareness about stroke. After his death we heard so many stories
about people having the same experience with stroke in Nigeria. In many cases,
they ended up with a disability or died. We felt we could close this gap and
help people at the early stages. For us, strokes need to be prevented in the
first place. This was how the project “MasterStroke” began. From March to
November 2015, we started creating a project plan and decided to set up a non-profit
to drive the project goals.

What does stroke support look like in
your country?

Many SSOs focus on awareness creation. In Nigeria there
are about 11- 15 different SSOs. Each has a different agenda. At the World
Stroke Congress in 2016, some of these SSOs met and discussed the possibility
of coming together to form a national stroke body that would drive stroke
support activities across the country. This vision is currently being explored.

What have been the highs so far for
your project?

In 2016, the
MasterStroke project reached 45,530+ people with lifesaving education about
stroke prevention and treatment. In Nigeria this information about stroke
prevention helped many people act FAST, and find the right hospitals for proper
treatment and rehabilitation support. We also partnered with local doctors and
nurses to provide free blood pressure and sugar level checks to more than 3,500
Nigerians. Free counselling was provided to 85% of people diagnosed with
hypertension during the campaigns.

What has been the feedback from stroke
survivors to the project?

Feedback has
been good overall. Many people acknowledge the work we have done around
awareness and education. This said, some stroke survivors are looking for us to
provide additional support such as sponsorship of rehabilitation activities or
creation of a stroke survivors network to facilitate conversations about how their
recovery is going. With more funding, we will expand the services we offer to
stroke survivors.

What has been the response from others
– community, doctors, and politicians?

Response to
our work has been very positive. We partnered with local doctors and nurses to
provide free blood pressure and sugar level checks to local communities. In
2016, we also partnered with many local government politicians to roll out
awareness events in their local communities. Turn out to our events have been
large and people within the community we visited were very happy we showed up.To find out more about MacDonald's work please visit:

About Sweetheme

Number of Entries : 35

We are Developers Team do our best to create beautiful work for our clients. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.

Review Policy

IJS adheres to COPE: CODE OF CONDUCT AND BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES FOR JOURNAL EDITORS.

We publish: Research papers, Reviews, Short Reports, Leading Opinions, Guidelines, Protocols, Panorama, and Editorials. We do not review Leading opinions; Guidelines, unless otherwise advised or submitted without a statement of endorsement from a reputable society; Consensus unless otherwise advised or submitted without a statement of endorsement from a reputable society; and Panorama articles that are about the experience of the author, unless the experience cannot be validated.